As I alluded to in a previous blog post, last month The Lord taught me a lot about how the roots of my past depression lie in my acceptance of hopelessness. He took me through a lot of healing about my depression and spoke life into a season I previously colored gray and tried to lock away in a box.
This month, The Lord is pressing a finger on anxiety—one of my oldest and deepest struggles.
I started dancing with anxiety when I was young—thirteen or so. My family left the church I’d grown up in and started attending a new church. I remember feeling anxiety ride next to me in the car as I headed to my first youth group at this new church. And when I got inside and found myself walking through a sea of my peers who I did not know, it launched its first attack on me.
Anxiety told me I was not wanted, that I was different, that I could never fit in here, that my family had made a mistake coming here. It took church, which had always been a safe place, and turned it into a place where I did not belong. These lies began here and they’ve shaped my identity and interactions with other ever since.
I remember how it waltzed me into the girl’s bathroom, my palms sweating, my heart hammering, my body not enjoying this first dance at all. I remember locking the bathroom stall door and trying my hardest to stay quiet as I vomited in the toilet and cried.
Our first dance, but not our last. Most ended up one of two ways; me crying and vomiting, feeling all the emotions, or me exhausted staring blankly at a wall, numb and unable to do anything.
I danced with anxiety at midnight when sleep escaped me; When I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw; In social situations of all manner; Anxiety and depression twirled me between the two of them at breakneck speeds in college; Most often, I danced with anxiety in beat with the ticking of a clock, feeling forever like time is running away from me—
I’ll admit, anxiety has a perfect dance floor this month. It knew this before I even arrived. It waited for me on a Malaysian train, its hand outstretched, asking for another dance.
When I felt it there, even though I know it to be destructive, it felt familiar amidst a life of unfamiliarity that is the World Race. So I took that hand and let it pull me into another dance.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on this month; I am unsure why I am here.
Our host hasn’t given us any direction besides telling us when meals are and that on Sundays he’ll take us to get Wi-Fi. My team is going through healthy, but still uncomfortable, conflict and major changes as one of our members has decided to go home. I don’t know what our ministry is, I am unable to leave our host’s home, I am surrounded by nothing but time, silence, my team, and my thoughts.
We’ve danced together for four days now. I don’t like it one bit. I don’t like the way this dance pulls at the bottom of my stomach, erasing my appetite and increasing it at random intervals. I don’t like the way it sneaks into my dreams. Anxiety makes my heart feel sick and my head feel fuzzy.
Despite willingly stepping into this, want to end this dance and never begin it ever again. I’ve been given glimpses of the higher dance I’m being called into and I want to get out of these familiar steps as quick as I can.
In all the times of my past that I chose to dance with anxiety, The Lord always stood to the side watching, waiting, His hand always also outstretched in invitation. And yeah, it might be so cliché to say that, but it’s true! The Lord is always waiting to invite us into his story—his dance—instead of whatever dance the world offers us.
I feel like in these first few months of the Race, The Lord is pointing to roots and strongholds in my life, ones I would rather leave alone, and pruning them away. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard and scary.
One of my lovely squad leaders spoke into me concerning this recently. She said that she feels like The Lord is digging up all these things so that He can heal me and seal them off.
Obviously, there is still work to be done, but once it’s done, The Lord will remove these things that I always counted as part of my identity and He will lock them in the past—not me just ignoring hurts.
Going forward into this month, I want to choose to take the Lord’s hand and never look back. I want to dance wholly with Him. I don’t want to fight His hands holding me because those are the hands that laid the foundations of this universe—why wouldn’t I trust them to lay the foundations of my identity?
Currently: Starbucks, Sungai Petani, Malaysia | 8:05 PM | 86% Funded | Anxiety has always used time to scare me, but I’ve recently been reminded that my Father created time, and who’s to say He wouldn’t start or stop it for my regard?
